The vaping wars might seem recent but the roots go deep. Surely the most puritan strand leads to Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), the grim reapers of gastronomic glee, who’ve turned the American childhood into a battlefield for their ascetic obsessions. A soda in a kid’s hand? Heresy. A toy with a burger? Seduction by Mammon. A bright candy? Poisoned temptation.
Since the Nixon era, they’ve preached fire and brimstone—lawsuits, bans, dire reports—to smite the sin of indulgence, all while cloaking their dogma as science. That same pious DNA fueled Mitch Zeller’s FDA reign, where vaping’s promise was drowned in regulatory holy water. CSPI doesn’t nudge; it commands, dreaming of a world where pleasure’s outlawed and obedience reigns. They’re not protectors—they’re tyrants in lab coats, hell-bent on saving us from ourselves, one joyless bite at a time.
This isn’t about science; it’s about control, a holier-than-thou ethos that’s spawned disciples like ex-FDA tobacco czar Mitch Zeller, who carried their gospel of grim denial into the vaping wars. Zeller, whose tenure at the Center for Tobacco Products helped mangle vaping regulation—a lifesaving alternative to smoking—into a bureaucratic nightmare. Call it the CSPI ethos: if it brings joy or relief, it must be crushed.
CSPI’s greatest hits are a litany of sanctimony. Since the 1970s, they’ve hounded soda out of schools and off kids’ menus, crowing when McDonald’s ditched it from Happy Meals in 2013. Their 1998 “Liquid Candy” report branded soft drinks as obesity’s root evil—never mind that moderation, not bans, might suffice. In 2010, they sued McDonald’s over Happy Meal toys, claiming plastic baubles hypnotized kids into eating fries. A judge tossed the case, affirming parental agency, but CSPI’s takeaway was clear: families can’t be trusted. Zeller even led a CSPI campaign to demonize macaroni-and-cheese.
This isn’t science; it’s sermonizing. CSPI’s campaigns—Food Day, the Predatory Marketing Prevention Act, the endless whining about ads and influencers—drip with distrust of human nature. They see parents as rubes, kids as victims, and entrepreneurs as mustache-twirling fiends. Ban the snacks, nix the sugar, regulate the fun away—utopia awaits. Except it doesn’t. Obesity’s still here, and the real culprits—poverty, broken systems—go untouched while CSPI polices Skittles.
That’s the same puritan impulse that drove Mitch Zeller, who ran CSPI’s legal shop in the 1980s before he moved to FDA. Vaping—vastly safer than smoking, with the highest efficacy for quitting cigarettes—should’ve been his triumph. Studies peg e-cigarettes as 95% less harmful than combustibles; millions have ditched Marlboros for mango pods. Yet under Zeller, the FDA turned a harm-reduction godsend into a regulatory quagmire. Premarket tobacco applications stacked up in his labyrinth, crushing small vape makers in red tape while Big Tobacco smirked. When millions of Americans pleaded for empathy and sensible regulation, the FDA swung a sledgehammer: flavor bans, mass rejections, and a de facto war on an industry saving lives.
Zeller’s FDA mirrored CSPI’s playbook: see a vice, assume the worst, punish the many for the sins of a few. Never mind that adult smokers—dying at 480,000 a year—need vaping more than kids need soda bans. The FDA’s own data shows vaping cuts smoking rates, yet Zeller’s legacy is a system so hostile it’s driven vapers back to cigarettes or the black market.
Puritanism doesn’t compromise; it crusades. CSPI wants a world without Froot Loops; Zeller’s FDA dreams of one without nicotine. Both ignore reality—kids will sneak sweets, smokers want safer alternatives—and replace it with a sterile fantasy.
The collateral damage is staggering. CSPI’s food wars guilt-trip working parents over a Happy Meal when a treat’s the least of their woes. The FDA’s vape crackdown snuffs out a lifeline for smokers—disproportionately poor, rural, desperate—because Zeller couldn’t stomach a nicotine hit that didn’t fit his moral frame. CSPI once swapped trans fats for sanctimony; Zeller traded smoking cessation for a body count. Both wield “public health” like a cudgel, blind to trade-offs or human agency.
Enough with the sermon. Smokers deserve vaping—a proven escape from cancer sticks—without the FDA’s righteous chokehold. Parents can handle a McNugget call; adults can weigh a vape’s risks. CSPI’s victories—Kellogg’s caving, dyes fading—haven’t dented obesity. Zeller’s reign of error has left millions deceived and bereft of the most effective options to stop smoking.
The puritan impulse in American life, that sanctimonious itch to scourge the sinner and sanctify the mundane, is as old as the Mayflower—and just as insufferable. Born in the flinty hearts of those who saw Satan in a harvest dance, it’s morphed over centuries from witch trials to temperance leagues, now finding its apotheosis in Parents Against Vaping, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, and their ilk.
These modern acolytes, armed with clipboards instead of catechisms, chase the same ghost: a fallen flock too weak to resist a Happy Meal or a vape puff. Their motive? Not health, but hegemony—a craving to remake a messy, free people into penitents bowing before their altar of kale and control. From Cotton Mather to Mitch Zeller, it’s the same sermon: liberty’s a vice, and only their righteous rod can save us.